A transport system for articles is known from WO 98/12313. Transport carts are used for transporting and for the intermediate storage of paper rolls which are intended for use in a printing press. The tracks of this transport system are arranged below the level of the surrounding ground, and the transport carts each have a support plate slightly projecting above the ground level for receiving the paper rolls.
Paper webs of varying properties, such as grain, surface quality, and the like can be used at the same time in a web-fed rotary printing press. They must be brought to the correct roll changer at the correct time. To simplify this process, it is proposed, in WO 98/28213, to equip paper rolls, which are transported in a transport system, with a contactless read/write data support, which can be written on and from which data can be read out by read/write devices installed at defined locations on the tracks. Information regarding important properties of a paper roll can be written on each of these data supports, so that it is possible, by reading out this property with the aid of a read/write device installed at a suitable location, to gain information regarding the properties of the roll present at the location of the read/write device in order to pass this roll, in accordance with its properties, along to a roll changer intended to receive it.
With these previously known transport systems, each roll of material, which is within the range of the transport system, must be equipped with such a read/write data support in order to be automatically correctly transported.
If the data supports are not recovered after a roll of material has been used, the cost of each roll of material is increased by the cost of the data support. However, the recovery of the data supports entails outlay for labor and organization. If the data supports are installed by the manufacturer of the rolls of materials, it is necessary that the user of these rolls of material conveys the data supports from used-up rolls of material back to the manufacturer. If the user of the rolls of material obtains these rolls of material from various different manufacturers, the compatibility of the data support from all of the various different manufacturers must be assured. If the user himself equips the rolls of material with data supports, he is forced to determine the data of each roll of material which is brought within the range of the transport system because of the roll being placed into a storage facility or in other ways, and to enter that data in the data support attached to the roll of material.
Since it is necessary to provide every roll of material within the range of the transport system, in other words possibly the entire stock, with a data support, a large number of data supports are required for implementing the system.
DE 39 42 009 C2 describes a system for the control and monitoring of the distribution of freight. Containers are each provided with a data carrier which can be repeatedly written on.
DE 44 46 203 A1 discloses a method for the digital recording of the circulation of beer barrels.